This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine
Preamble
As the world seems to be moving away from truth and honesty, I am slowly getting obsessed with fact-checking and verification. A testimony to this is my Week 3 submission to Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge: a clickbait triage extension. This time I follow-up on the topic, following the Week 4 theme.
What I Built
On the surface, GhostProof is a Halloween-themed game of two-truths-and-a-lie. The theme is that a fictional ghost has hidden one a fabrication among two legit claims. If you catch the lie, the haunting weakens; if you fall for it, the ghost grows.
In the deployed demo, the questions are about St Paul's ghost stories, NASA's UAP study, and sprites above thunderstorms. The aim is not to reward blind trust in an AI answer. It is to make checking the evidence the interesting part.
However, it does not stop here. The gist of the exercise lies in the ability to run the game in your local machine, with the intelligence sourced from your locally-run Gemma 4. Once you have this setup going, no two games will ever be identical, as each question (including the fabricated fact) will be generated on the fly.
How I Built It
In the heart of it lies the fact that there is less and less facts on the internet (pun intended). And we should question everything we hear, see, read. The "ghosts" are haunting us with their lies hidden among the truth. It feels like there is an endless amount of these lies... so, let's start from there - infinity.
I got Gemma running on my laptop. So, let's get it to work. With the free, unlimited and unhinged token generator (until the laptop runs out of charge, of course...), we can create an unlimited number of fabrications, lies, fake news.
But wait, there is an arch-nemesis to this arch-villain. That is a double-negation, meaning, there is an arch-hero... Anyway, enter VerifyIt. Since VerifyIt is already deployed publicly and available to verify claims (I documented this journey on my LinkedIn), the player is equipped with a superpower to overcome the adversaries and unearth the truth!
Demo
Game link - hosted on GitHub Pages. As mentioned above, I have pre-generated and populated this demo with some questions. It is intentionally kept simple: cached content, no accounts and no live inference. Also, you can inspect the answers - it is a learning game, not a zero-sum competition or a fact-checking service.
And once you get it running on your local machine (alongside with your local Gemma), you get unlimited unique, never-repeating trove of games.
Code
Full code is on Github: aydin41k/ghostproof.
The source package contains the static application, exact accepted public content, dependency-free tests, a five-file site builder, deterministic ZIP tooling, and the original preparation modules as labelled historical source references. Private transport bodies and model responses are excluded.
In the true OSS spirit, original code and SVG/CSS artwork are offered under MIT; licensing scope and third-party exclusions explain why attributed excerpts and unestablished generated-text rights are not covered by that grant (duh...).
Moreover, Vanilla JavaScript modules, Node's built-in tests and Python's standard library are packaged in a way that the game is reproducible without an install step. Tests cover all eight win/loss sequences, answer locking, replay, malformed content, source URL restrictions and archive allowlists. An extracted-package rehearsal runs the game/client tests and rebuilds outside the original checkout.
Why Does Open Innovation Matter?
There is an Arabic proverb attributed to Ali ibn Abi Talib: Knowledge is a treasure that increases when you share it. Someone before us has came up with an idea of "fact-checking" to counter propaganda of lies, false advertisement and fake news. We took it to a new level by making fact-checking more accessible, fast and user-friendly through the VerifyIt website, browser extension and the soon-to-come mobile app. And this project is making fact-checking more fun,twisted and season-appropriate :)
What will this project serve as a basis, or as an inspiration for - we are yet to see. But the fact that this project is out there, available for everyone to use, share, as well as grab and run with it, means that whatever is coming next will be one step above where we are now. And this is the true beauty and utility of open innovation.
Open innovation is paramount to advance the humanity collectively. It makes sure that everyone can have a say in our evolution as a species.
The Spirit of It
We are giving the very serious issue of truth-seeking and lie-detection a fun-and-games thematic. The ghost and haunting part is theatrical; the evidences are not. In the demo, a church, a UFO scene and a storm set the scene for a short haunted-house visit. The ghost shrinks when caught, grows when believed, and disappears after three correct answers. Which gives the whole setup the competitive aspect that a game deserves.
Prize Categories
Gemma: implemented in the code. The claims in the demo were generated by local Gemma and included as an example. The application can be installed and connected to a locally running Gemma for infinite generations.
GitHub Copilot category via GitHub Actions: demonstrated automation through the successful hosted CI run and Pages deployment.
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